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Michael DVD

Petrov's Review

You gotta learn to laugh, it's the way to true love.

Finally I decided to write about Michael. After removing all the enthusiastic interjections, I got this.

Michael.
An excellent film. Even not a film, but a videocourse for beginners of bodhisattvas. How he manages everything! For ages. Everything is accurate, you can't find his fault anywhere. Do you remember?
-Now!
-What now?
-Apologize now!
...

And besides he has forehead made of pig iron ("Battle!"), he is an atomic-bomb-man, and, at the same time, Love itself. ("All you need is love...", only boys sing"). And, by the way, how many tricks he needed to return love to two unhappy corked people ("It's hard to teach a man love again"). Can you imagine what effort is needed to make a person move at least a centimeter to the right way? For he could stop being unhappy and corked?

And I remember, Michael said several times: "It's outside my competence". What he really said was: "You can make any wonders yourself, you don't need me". Or, shorter: "WAKE UP!!!".
It's a very correct and lightful film, without typical for Hollywood rivers of blood.

Amazon.com Editorial Review

After the box-office success of Phenomenon, John Travolta continued to charm audiences with this 1996 comedy-fantasy in which he plays a grubby angel who's got one last good deed to do before heading back to heaven. Living peacefully in the rural Iowa home of an old, friendly motel owner (Jean Stapleton), the winged Michael (Travolta) is hardly the image of a perfect angel. He's scruffy, unshaven, eats sweetened cereal by the box-full and chain-smokes all day long. But when tabloid reporters (William Hurt, Robert Pastorelli) learn of Michael's alleged existence and head to Iowa to check him out, Michael soon realizes that it's his task to see that Hurt falls in love with an "angel expert" (Andie MacDowell) and breaks free from his habitually cynical attitude. There's more to the story, of course (and Chasing Amy fans will recognize Joey Lauren Adams as a waitress who charms the angel), but Michael is more about the effect that this enchanting angel has on the earthbound humans around him. Whether he's chipping away at Hurt's skepticism or attracting a crowd of women on a truck-stop dance floor, Michael is an enchanting figure, and Travolta plays him with just the right tone of humor, reverence, and effervescent charm. Sure, it's lightweight fluff, but director Nora Ephron specializes in lightweight fluff, and Michael is the kind of feel-good movie that never wears out its welcome.